Thirty-five
“You bastard. You’re not going to get away with this.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Now, let’s get moving. Keep your hands behind your back where I can see them. That’s a good girl. We’ll go out the way we came.”
“You’re crazy. You can’t kill two women in one night—four altogether—without someone finding out.”
“It depends on who you are. Whom you know. I’ve already spoken to Haas. He’s so very grateful about what the network is doing for him. He’ll handle the little problem with Sheila. After all, she had broken in, you know. It was dark. I might have thought it was some dangerous lunatic looking for drug money … I’m not really concerned.”
“How are you going to explain shooting me?”
“I won’t have to,” Magnus said as they reached the kitchen door. “Open it up, slowly, now. That’s right. Keep on going, out onto the lawn. My goodness, the storm is picking up all right.”
The wind raged through the trees and shrubs, though the rain was holding off. The weather vane on top of the pool house was skittering around in circles.
“I’m right behind you, darling,” Magnus said as she stumbled across the lawn. “No, not the wine cellar. We’re going to take a nice long walk on the beach.”
The walk wasn’t nice, though it was very long and cold. The wind blew the sand into Cassie’s eyes and nose and mouth; the cold took her in its grasp and shook her viciously—her teeth literally chattering against one another.
But she felt all of this from far away—as though she were watching herself perform in a badly lit home movie—while she concentrated all her thinking on the man behind her. She replayed in her imagination what Magnus had told her about Felice Ruhl’s death, Miranda’s final hours alive, Sheila’s ill-fated venture. Don’t worry, Sheila had assured her, it’ll look like Magnus is just fooling around with me again. Piece of cake. Sheila, who could never bring herself to blame Magnus for anything, including breaking her heart, was now gone, too. But her death was unlike the others. Up until the moment Magnus admitted that he had shot Sheila in the back, a part of Cassie still wanted to believe that Felice’s and Miranda’s deaths had indeed been accidents. Fits of passion with fatal results—not truly evil. But earlier that night, Magnus had crossed over the line. He’d drawn the gun and fired, fully intent on killing. Throughout their long night together, Cassie had been afraid of Magnus because he held a gun in his hand. Now she was terrified of him because of what he was in his heart: a murderer.
Cassie lost track of how far they’d walked up the beach, how long she’d been stumbling into the wind. They were deep into the stretch of state park beach that ran for many miles between the Hamptons and Montauk when it finally started to rain.
“This will do,” Magnus called out over the wind. “Stop here.” Cassie turned. It was too dark to make out his features; he appeared as a looming black silhouette against a churning background of sea, beach, and sky.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, surprised that her voice sounded so steady and strong. “Shoot me and bury me in the sand? You realize that’s mad, don’t you?”
“I’m perfectly sane,” Magnus replied. “And I’ve no intention of shooting you. You’re going for a swim.”
“I’m not. I can’t swim. I’m … afraid of the water.”
“Yes, well, that’s a pity, but I’ve worked this all out. I’ll say you’ve been despondent for many months since your sister’s death. You have no other family, you’re all alone in the world. I’ll imply that you tried to step into Miranda’s shoes at the network but didn’t quite make the grade. I’ll admit, to my deepest regret, that I’d told you just this afternoon that Miranda’s job was going to someone else. Oh, you became so despondent! Finally, after months of not wanting to face the house and all its memories, you came out here alone. You had some brandy, made a fire. But finally, distraught, perhaps slightly drunk, you wandered outside. You walked down the beach. You went for a swim, right here, where unfortunately there happens to be a particularly strong undertow. My dear … I’m afraid you drowned.”
“No.” From childhood, it had been her worst fear and the source of recurring nightmares: something forcing her head beneath the water, sucking her under; the panicky struggle for breath. “I won’t do it.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t have time for dramatics. Start walking into the surf.”
“I won’t.”
“Cassie, I’m warning you,” he cried, “I don’t want to have to force you, but I will. I think you know that now.”
The rain that had taken so long to arrive now pelted against the sand and churned the surf with an insistent hissing noise. Cassie turned toward the dark, turbulent surf where, as far out as she could see, whitecaps formed and crashed and formed again. Salt air and sea foam stung her eyes. She started to wade in, the first waves swirling coldly against her ankles.
She had never learned to swim, despite endless attempts at YWCA lessons. It had not helped that Miranda, fearless as always, had taken to the water as though the ocean were a second home, riding in the waves on the North Carolina shore like some sea goddess grandly surveying her domain. Miranda had been on the swim team in high school, even helping the school win a state championship in her junior year. Cassie had never even learned to tread water.
“Come on, honey,” her father had encouraged her one summer when she was six or seven and they were vacationing at Cape Hatteras. He couldn’t stand seeing the rapt look of envy on his younger daughter’s face as she watched her older sister play in the surf with the other children. “I’ll hold your hand. We won’t go out far.”
Perhaps if things had gone differently that summer day, Cassie thought as she felt her knees shaking with cold, she might have had some chance against this storm-tossed night. But just as her father had led her into the surf, she’d tripped and been swept under by a sudden wave. She’d come to no harm, of course, except for a bruised elbow and a noseful of seawater, but that night she’d had her first nightmare.
Her parents, believing nature should take its course in such matters, never pressured her to try again. She thought of her parents now as the waves drenched her, as numbness began to creep up her legs. How hard they had tried to be fair, to love her and Miranda equally, to encourage each to be her own person. They had believed in the power of love, the ability of any individual to grow, change, excel. They had devoted their lives to the idea that all people are created equal—have the same rights. And they had believed that people like Senator Anthony Haas shared and struggled for the same ideals.
I can’t die, Cassie told herself, and let Haas and Magnus continue on. I have to stop them … have to … A wave knocked her over, and she stumbled blindly in its foamy wake, her soaked skirt dragging her down until she ripped it off.
“Keep going,” Magnus cried from the shore, his voice much clearer and closer than she would have thought. “Keep moving … now.”
She regained her footing and lurched forward but also sideways hoping any movement would give Magnus the illusion that he was being obeyed. Twice more she was knocked down by incoming waves, the second time floating for several seconds before regaining her balance. She tried floating again on her own in between the breakers. She kicked. She moved her arms. Within seconds, she was swimming for the first time in her life.
“That’s right, Cassie darling…” She thought she heard Magnus’s voice above the roar of the surf, but it might have been the wind. It didn’t matter anymore. She was moving outward with the current, floating above her fear. Soon, even the cold didn’t bother her that much, though she knew by the strangely weighted feeling in her legs that she was probably going numb. The terror was gone.
I can’t die now, she reminded herself as she felt her legs grow heavy and her arms start to burn with fatigue. I can’t because … She struggled mentally to remember why she couldn’t die. There was something besides the need to st
op Magnus and Haas, someone…
Jason, I was wrong about Jason. For the first time that night she let herself think about him, and she immediately felt new energy flood into her limbs. She thought about his mouth, his smile. She thought about his voice, the strange sound of his laughter. She thought about his arms, the feel of them around her. She was wrong, as Miranda had been wrong before her. Even now Jason didn’t know what had happened in that hotel room. He’d been told the girl had overdosed on drugs and—despite Haas’s extortion attempt—he had refused to have anything to do with a cover-up knowing only that. And he hadn’t been responsible for Miranda’s death, didn’t even know that it had been a murder. He was, after all, the man with whom Cassie had first fallen in love. She had been wrong, as Miranda had been wrong, not to trust him. Though she had never stopped loving him, Cassie knew now that in her own way, Miranda had never stopped loving him either.
“There’s a lot going on here,” Miranda had told her their last morning together, “that you know nothing about.” Now, at last, she knew everything. And it was too late. She tried once again to capture the memory of Jason’s smile, but it was gone. A whitecap swept over her, and she swallowed water. She coughed and struggled against the current that had been carrying her out to sea. She could no longer see the beach; she no longer knew in which direction she was swimming. She was tired, so she closed her eyes.
She’d been treading water in a semidoze when a sharp clear report—like a gunshot—startled her fully awake. She thought she heard voices, and there seemed to be a light coming from her left.
“I’m here,” she cried, paddling weakly toward the light. “I’m right over here.” She called out again and again as she saw the lights crisscrossing in front of her. Once, she was sure she heard the distant roar of an engine. The light came and went, and the voices—or was it just the surf?—were buffeted back and forth in the wind. She kept swimming, despite her desperate feeling that the tide was pulling her farther out. She decided to close her eyes for just a second—she was so tired—but she knew as soon as she did so that she was giving up.
And then—how lovely—she was able to recall Jason’s face again. The way he looked when they were making love—his eager, almost boyish smile, the slight indentations at either cheek that would, on a less formidable face, be called dimples. She wanted so to reach out and touch his lips. To tell him she was sorry, that it was all okay now, that everything was going to be fine after all…
“What’s that—over there!”
“Just whitecaps, sir. I’m sorry, but—”
“No, look, it’s something white. Where’s that other searchlight?”
“He’s right … there is something.” The small inflatable dinghy bobbed dangerously in the surf, half-flooded by the roiling water and the weight of the three men. The two policemen tried to hold Jason back when they finally reached the floating body. The woman’s blond hair was fanned out across the water, her pale arms lifeless.
“Don’t, sir, I’m afraid it’s…” But the man was out of the dinghy before they had the chance to restrain him, his arms around the girl, hugging her to him. With one arm grasping the plastic raft and the other bracing her against him, his mouth closed over the girl’s as he worked frantically to resuscitate her.
When the dinghy finally reached the shore, the ambulance was waiting, its red light circling. Two uniformed paramedics ran down to meet them, carrying a stretcher.
Jason dragged her out of the water, his mouth still working against hers until the men pulled her roughly from his grasp.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing more you can do now,” one of them told him gently.
Thirty-six
It was dazzling clear day. Chilly, windless, the sun so bright that it hurt Jason’s eyes as he made his way from the house to the police cruiser, his boots crunching on the white gravel Miranda had insisted on importing from Italy. For the first time in nearly a year, he’d spent the night at the beach house, though by the time the police were through he hadn’t gotten to bed until after three o’clock. But he’d slept soundly, as he had never been able to in the old days.
Early that morning, when he woke up and went out on the deck adjoining the master bedroom, he realized what was different. He had not dreamed about Miranda. He had been able to sleep the night in the king-size bed they had once shared without once imagining her face. Or hearing her voice. He had come back to the place where she’d felt the most at home and not found her there. The calm white sunlight filled the empty room, flashing against her many minors, but Miranda’s ghost was gone.
He’d called the hospital, the police, and finally Heather, assuring his daughter that everything was fine. Though he wasn’t at all sure of that himself. Cassie was alive. Physically she was going to be fine.
“Her mental condition is another matter,” the doctor in charge of her admittance the night before had told him. “She’s not coherent. We’ve sedated her, and we’ll keep a close eye on her all night, but I have to tell you that I’m concerned. We don’t know for sure how much damage she might have sustained.”
The hospital had been just as noncommittal that morning when he’d called, but the head nurse had agreed to let him see her during regular visiting hours at eleven o’clock. In the meantime, the police had arrived to escort him to the station house. The local cops had been as polite as possible, but it was clear to Jason that they all felt this was the kind of ugly, complicated matter best settled in Manhattan.
Representatives from the D.A.’s office, state police brass, corporate lawyers from Magnus Media, and God knew who all else, along with Jason, were being called into an emergency session that morning. As far as Jason was concerned though, the urgency for such a meeting was gone. A rookie East Hampton police patrolman had ended it the night before. He’d shot Magnus square in the heart seconds after Magnus had let fire with his own handgun. It had been a classic police academy hit, one, Jason felt, that should make the young policeman proud. One that Jason would have given almost anything to have administered himself.
Though he had already delivered his statement the night before, Jason was asked to recap what had happened to the haggard-looking group of men and women assembled in the airless station-house conference room. It was not the way any of them had intended to spend that Saturday morning.
“I got a call last night—around ten—from Sheila Thomas, a producer at Magnus Media. She was shot, badly hurt, and left for dead at Vance Magnus’s apartment.”
“Objection,” a balding but very fit-looking lawyer angrily interjected. “‘Left for dead’ implies motive.”
“And this is not a court of law,” the police chief replied. “Nothing’s going on any record. We’re just trying to get some of the basic details straight in what appears to be a pretty messed-up situation. Now, you don’t have to be here if you don’t want. But if you are going to stay, shut up until you’re asked to butt in. Proceed, Mr. Darin.”
He explained how he’d phoned 911, met the ambulance and police at Magnus’s, and helped get Sheila to the emergency room at Roosevelt. Although she’d been only semiconscious when Jason had first arrived at the apartment Sheila had become fully awake—even agitated—during the ride to the hospital. Jason, holding her hand in the back of the ambulance, had tried to calm her down, but she kept gesturing for him to bend down so that she could whisper.
“I didn’t mean to tell him. He pretended so well, you know? He blamed you, said he was worried about Cassie. I believed him. I didn’t know … he made me tell him where she was…”
“Sheila, just take it easy. You’ve lost a lot of blood. We’ll talk about all this in the morning.”
“No! Now!” She’d tried to sit up, but Jason and one of the paramedics held her down. “You’ve got to get out there. He’s on his way out there now. You’ve got to stop him. He’s going to try to get Cassie next.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Magnus
is following Cassie out to your summer house.”
“Cassie’s not out there. She said she was spending the night with a friend … she said she was going to be with you…”
“Jason, believe me, she’s there—and she’s in trouble. Magnus—look what he did to me—he’s dangerous.”
There was a moment of uneasy quiet in the crowded conference room. Then the police chief said, “That’s about when you called us, right? From the hospital. Honestly, sir, you were a little bit incoherent yourself at that point—or we would have moved faster.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jason said, though it might have. They’d resisted going out to the house without him being there, delaying the search for Magnus by the two hours it took Jason to drive to East Hampton. The department’s slowness to respond to a situation they’d initially called “domestic” might have cost Cassie her life. He was sick at heart by the thought that his own slowness to understand what was going on around him—his refusal to face so many of his own unanswered questions about Magnus—might have contributed to the disaster. “If you don’t need me any further,” he said, rising to leave, “I’d like to get over to the hospital.”
He was just out of the room when the Magnus Media corporate lawyer was on his feet, saying: “I demand a legal hearing on this matter immediately. This so-called briefing is a travesty. Gross injustice is being done to the memory of Vance Magnus. I demand that this matter be immediately moved to Manhattan where due process can best assure a fair reading—and outcome. I demand—”
A patrolman drove Jason to the hospital where he’d left his motorcycle the night before. The streets of East Hampton seemed so quiet and peaceful, the white steepled roofs and gingerbread porches reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting. But both Jason and the taciturn policeman beside him in the front seat of the cruiser knew better than that. The grotesque events of the night before lingered heavily in the air like the smoke of burning leaves. And soon the news would spread from this quiet hamlet to the larger world. The first word, like a pebble cast on the calm surface of the pond, would be that Vance Magnus had been shot to death by a local policeman. But that was just the initial ripple in a story that would widen and widen to encompass and swamp countless lives and careers.
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